Monday, November 25, 2013

A Father's Beautiful Letter to His Gay Son


Thanksgiving is only three days away and for many in the LGBT community it's a time of pain and hurt arising from parental and family rejection.  Rejection fueled most often by the parents and family members who cling to the ignorant writing of Bronze Age herders rather than exercise thought and analysis to discern that the Bible is fraught with inconsistencies and much that is ugly and down right horrible.  As longer term readers know, I was lucky and when I came out in mid-life, my parents accepted me without reservation (in honor of my late parents, I endowed a scholarship in their name for LGBT graduating high school students).  But others have been lucky too.  A piece in The New Civil Rights Movement reflects on one such happy story:

A father overheard his son making plans to come out to him. The son apparently was talking with his boyfriend.

The dad, who deserves a “Father of the Year” award, wrote him a letter to save him the trouble of coming out.
“Nate,” the dad writes, “I overheard your phone conversation with Mike last night about your plans to come out to me. The only thing I need you to plan is to bring home orange juice and bread after class. We are out, like you now.”
“I’ve known you were gay since you were six, I’ve loved you since you were born.”
“P.S. Your mom and I think you and Mike make a cute couple.”

We thought this was pretty cool, and tried to find the letter’s origins. Turns out, this was published back in March, but since we hadn’t seen it, we thought perhaps you might not have either.

The letter was published most recently here, but also earlier on Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post, and on FCKH8.com.

Kudos to this father.  He exemplifies good parenting unlike the "godly folk" who reject their own children because they are gay.   For those not as lucky as Nate in the letter discussed, please keep them in your thoughts and help them keep hope alive that someday their parents/families will have the scales peeled off their eyes and see the real truth: we are all equally human and all deserving of love.

1 comment:

Stan said...

I think our parents, especially our Mothers, always know.